I've been quite busy today. Not only am I collecting data at the synchrotron, but I took a participated in a national survey on the suicidal tendencies of graduate students (I'm not, by the way), and I wrote a review of an NSF proposal that was sent to me (that was a lot of work, actually). I gave the guy a good review, with a few noted exceptions, but I thought the proposal was very important and definitely something that should be funded. I know the guy who wrote the proposal (everybody knows everybody else in this "business") and he would do a good job of it. Anyways, I think I'm gonna take it easier for the rest of the day.

The x-ray beam is going to be shut down for an hour or so at 7, so it'll probably be a long night tonight.

I'm at the synchrotron again, but an exciting thing happened to me today.

I went into the city (New York City, that is) because I had a free day. I walked around 5th avenue in midtown, past some fancy stores, past the Sirius studios, past Trump Tower, past NBC studios, and past Rockefeller Center. Then I headed over to the Museum of Modern Art, which was fucking amazing! I definitely recommend it, especially if you like Picasso (I don't), because they have shitloads of it. There's some pretty weird stuff there too.

After MoMA, I started walking south again back towards Penn Station, but west of 5th Avenue so see something new. I passed on intersection with a bunch of italian restaurants, and then a few minutes later you will never guess who I ran into...

Michael Imperioli.

That's right, Christopher from the Sopranos. He was with a few other people, probably family members, and probably heading out to eat, so that's one reason I didn't say anything. The second was I couldn't recall the guy's name! There's also that split second reaction of "Oh shit, don't piss off the mafia guy!" So, even though I had my camera with me, I didn't get any proof that it was really him, but it so was.

I need to start thinking about my music listening habits again. You see, I've been stuck on this idea that the only music worth some monetary value is that recorded onto CDs (from a record company), and in a sense, that's sort of true. But a person can't listen to CDs everywhere. I'm basically limited to listening to them in my car, but I want to listen to music when I'm on the computer, when I'm in the lab doing sample prep, or when I'm on the TEM. (Recently, I was given a free promotional mp3 player, and I've found that the latter two activities are made tremendously more bearable when I can listen to music.) Plus, I now have a shitload of CDs that I don't really listen to, but I do when I'm in the mood for a particular CD.

So my value system used to be, only music on CDs, which have full recording fidelity, are worth anything, and any other form of music, like mp3s (which naturally have lost some of the true fidelity of the song, although you can barely tell) or burned CDs. Because of my CD glut at home, I've allowed myself to sell CDs that I no longer wish to listen to, but that has opened up a whole can of worms. Most of the CDs I've sold back are kitchy or impulse buys, which I probably wouldn't have purchased in the first place if I got to listen to them for a week. I've even sold back a couple CDs that are great, but have one or two completely unlistenable songs, so that it becomes an annoying hastle to listen to just the good ones. Imagine how much money a person could save by being able to preview an album for a week!

And like most people, I have a number of CDs that I absolutely love and listen to on a regular basis, and then a large number of CDs that I like and listen to occasionally. I'd rather not hold onto those CDs because they just take up space, but I do want to listen to them every now and then when I'm in the mood. And I paid good money for them, so why give them up?

I also have a number of mp3s that I've gathered over the years since I first found out about the mp3 format freshman year of college. It was the most awesome thing ever because the mp3 format encodes the music into a small file size, while the old wav format is uncompressed and makes a huge file. I used to listen to them all the time back in college, but now I do all my work on my laptop, and my PC just sits in the livingroom downloading BitTorrent files. I still download mp3s from time to time, but what good are they if I don't listen to them? They're worthless in my value system anyway, but I keep them around for convenience.

But now that I've gotten a "slap on the wrist" about downloading copyright content (I'm not going to talk about it here; ask me in person), downloading mp3s for free is not so convenient. Also, as I said before, having the ability to take mp3s with me on a portable mp3 player has made monotonous tasks much more bearable, so mp3s are beginning to have value for me. I also rely on mp3s alot for previewing albums or bands that I want to buy, to see if I like their music.

I've always hated the pay-per-song idea for mp3s (like iTunes). That's not that different from buying a CD in my eyes, because you can't preview the whole song, and if you end up not liking it afterwards, you can't sell it back. I would like the ability to download all the mp3s I want, whenever I want, and I'll promise that I'll delete them after a while. Because why would I keep mp3s around to fill up my hard drive if they are so convenient? And if I really like the music, I'll buy the CD anyway. These types of services are available (i.e. Napster, which used to be Roxio), but they cost a monthly subscription fee, and they each have their own limitations. Right now I'm using Ruckus, which is free to all ASU students, and I love the freedom to download a song or album whenever I want it or to preview it, but I can't burn songs to a CD or transfer them to my mp3 player. You have to pay to be able to do that, and I don't know if I'm willing to do that yet. But I've already discovered that some CDs I've been wanting to buy but haven't been sure about, I probably wouldn't listen to all that often, so now I won't buy them. I've also found another CD that I like alot and want to buy, so it works both ways.

So here's what I'm thinking so far:
(1) I want the ability to download unlimited mp3s and transfer to an mp3 player
(2) I want the ability to burn favorite mp3 songs to a CD (maybe willing to pay per song for this)
(3) If there is an album I listen to alot as mp3s, I will most likely also purchase the CD

Of course all this depends on my music listening habits, and my priorities may always change. I'm still working all this out in my head.

I haven't blogged in a while. Sorry. I've been focussing on many other things besides blogging right now. There's this little guy in the back of my head that keeps reminding me that graduation will sneak up before I know it. So I've either been very diligent with dissertation writing and research or completely procrastinating against it. Blogging doesn't really fit into either of those categories for me.

Although I've had a bit of experience with Unix and Linux in the past, and even installed Red Hat 9 on an old computer once, I'm pretty much a complete newbie when it comes to Linux. I just installed Ubuntu linux on my computer at home because it's the first distribution I've heard about that is "supposed" to be geared towards desktop computers (rather than servers). As a reference not only for me but for others as well, I thought I would begin a blog about it.

bradubuntu linux

Awesome News!

My paper has just been officially accepted to American Mineralogist! More details later once I get them.

GSRP Complete!

I finished and submitted my GSRP renewal proposal today. In plenty of time for the Feb 1 due date, too. I'm also excited because tomorrow I'll be heading to Tucson for the Gem and Mineral Show.

I've done three pages (out of five) of my GSRP renewal. It's 5:30 now, so it's time to cut out and go home. Hopefully tomorrow I can finish the rest, including two figures of spectra.

I met my goal for this week...finishing section 1.1 of my dissertation, entitled "Evidence for early life on Earth". It's just a brief summary of our current knowledge of microfossils, stromatolites, and biomarkers before I get into the nitty gritty of the rocks I'm studying (sections 1.2 and 1.3). This intro chapter is going to take me a little while because I am referencing about 10 papers per paragraph, most of which I'm reading or re-reading to make sure I get it right. Next week I have to cram and get my GSRP renewal proposal written. That shouldn't take too long, but it's one of those things that requires all sorts of people's signatures.

So I got a new haircut yesterday. I let Tennille do whatever she wants, and she was feeling "short" and "adventurous". So she gave me a military-type cut, that's sort of like a really mini-mohawk with a tail. Kelly thinks it's totally awesome, but Jace laughs every time he looks at me. I think Beth is more my friend now.

I had one of those big "Oh SHIT!" moments yesterday when I found out that the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference abstract was due today instead of next tuesday. I've been writing and making figures like crazy since then. I just submitted it, about 30 minutes before it was due. Whew!

I'll admit it. I've purchased ringtones and wallpapers for my phone, mainly because my newest cell phone had few good default choices. Yes they are a ripoff, but if you're into art (both modern and classic) two really good wallpaper services are START Mobile and Pixurez. The former has more good art (including kozyndan and Braveland Design!) than the latter, but Pixurez does have Junko Mizuno. I just wish START Mobile was available to Verizon Wireless customers like me, but I guess that keeps me from wasting my money on overpriced, low resolution images.

Most ringtone sites are pretty similar, but the polyphonic tones from YAMAHA seem to be of slightly higher quality than the rest. Unfortunately, they don't have Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Our sink backed up last night. I don't want to lay blame, but it might be related to the pile of carrot peels that Kelly shoved down the garbage disposal. Anyways, today I stayed home to fix it. It turned out to be pretty easy. All the pipes were plastic and they had screw-on connectors, so I could easily remove the section of pipe that was clogged. Now everything flows normally, but I still have to reseal the connection with the garbage disposal with plumber's putty.

Oh, I should mention that Kelly got me this totally awesome digital camera for Christmas. She really shouldn't have. She told me for weeks that she got me a drill, and I was completely fooled. When I was opening the present, I thought to myself, "Hey, Canon doesn't make drills?!?...Oh!" Thanks Kelly!

I'm back on the face of the Earth now. Kelly and I have been to Four Peaks for the past two weekends now. It's really awesome country there, and it's not too far away from home. Here's a picture of Ed in front of Brown's Peak from the first weekend. It was more of an exploratory hike, and it turned out both our guidebooks were wrong or misleading. This past weekend, Kelly, Ed, and I camped, and we hiked with Kelly's parents out to the amethyst mine.

I've been revising my AmMin paper this week. The reviews weren't that bad. I just have to add a few things. Actually, the biggest issue the second reviewer had was my use of the term "morphology" to mean shape rather than the study of shape! I hope to get it resubmitted before the new year. Part of the process is to write a cover letter explaining how I satisfied (or why I ignored) the reviewers comments.

This post has been deleted by the author.

I never blog much around the holidays. There's so much going on, and I'm usually really busy at ASU. Beth came by this weekend. She was in town for a wedding, but she spared some time to hang out with Kelly and I. Josh stopped by too. It was a blast.

I have some good news. I got the reviews back from my paper to American Mineralogist. They were generally good, and the journal asked for a revision, which is usually a sign that they'll publish the paper. Finally, I may get my paper published! Keep your fingers crossed.

The tech review went ok, although it was brutal. I had to stop at each slide and field comments and questions. Part of that was poor preparation on my part. But the whole process was pretty constructive, and I don't have too much more added to everything I already need to do to complete the project.

Do you hate blogs?

I've been feeling shitty all week. I thought I got over the cold, but I've had headaches, a sore throat, and have been stuffed up all week. I wonder if I have allergies or something. They did just start the cotton harvest. The thing that makes me feel the best when I'm like this are menthol cough drops. I thought I had some at ASU, but I must have used them all up. I'll pick some up at the MU.

My tech review is coming along nicely, I think. It's weird to put all the work I've done into some sort of coherent framework. I'm trying not to worry that my committee may just bash the whole thing and give me a bunch of extra work to do.

The Geology holiday "party" is this afternoon in the F-wing lobby. They set up a bunch of food and candy, but it's been getting worse every year. I mean, who eats rolled up deli meats anymore? Maybe this year will be better. I could use a good cookie now.

I caught some sort of cold yesterday that kicked my ass. I had headaches, stuffiness, and fevers. I think I worked it all out of my system last night, but I feel like shit today. At least I didn't come down with the flu or something. Now is the worst time for me to get sick because I have my tech review next week.

Doh. I guess Kelly already used that joke!

Kelly is having...the Best Week Ever!

It is so frickin' cold right now!

I hope everybody's Thanksgiving went well, because mine was pretty fun. My dad came over to Kelly's parent's house for a catered meal. Kelly's cousin is in town too. Kelly made some awesome garlic mashed potatoes. In case you think I was just laying around, I was busy cleaning the house while she was cooking. So, Thursday we ate. Friday we climbed Camelback. Saturday we went to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. Sunday was mostly shopping. Meanwhile, Kelly and I have been watching the first season of Six Feet Under on DVD. I started watching the show during season 3, so it's funny to see where the characters first came from.

In other news, my eBay auctions ended last night. Surprisingly, the Home Alone game sold for the highest price (take that, Beth!). It was a relatively painless experience, but both eBay and PayPal skim off a portion of the profits.

I posted my first auctions on eBay. You can see them h e r e. I've never done this before, so we'll see how it goes. I'm just selling some Super Nintendo games that I never liked and will never play again. I actually dragged out my SNES last weekend to play around with it. I tried out all my games, and I still hate to play these ones, so I want to get rid of them.

So I got a haircut Monday morning at the usual place, Dolce. They have grown a lot over the past couple years, expanding their spa. Now they want to open an upscale barbershop so guys don't have to feel uncomfortable going to a "salon". So they need some male hair models to put up on the walls, and since I have longer hair (unlike most guys) they asked if I was interested. I said sure and filled out a "model sheet", but I was sure they wouldn't use me 'cause I'm not very photogenic. But they called me yesterday, and I chickened out and said I couldn't do it. I mean, who wants to look at a big picture of me staring down at them in the waiting room. "Hey, look at me. You can get a doofus haircut like me." No thanks. But it's nice to be asked.

Um, yeah...I don't really know what to say about this. It's just too bizarre.

So apparently you can purchase a whole episode of Lost on iTunes for $1.99. That's about 40 minutes of medium quality audio and video. Or you can purchase about 40 minutes of high quality audio for about $10. Either that's a steal for commercial-free TV or we're paying way too much for music these days.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Kelly and I went to Dehli Palace last night. I tried to order the veggie pekoras but I accidentally said "keporas". That made the waiter chuckle, and then he told me that word means "a man's balls". Boy, was I embarrased!

Last night I was working on my ore deposits homework with some classmates. We started a discussion of geologic/geographic terms that people pronounce pretentiously. Here's a small list:

lava
Himalaya
Kamchatka (I think I do)
placer (Don Burt definitely does)

What others can you think of?

By the way, I did finish reading my book this past weekend, but I won't update the "Currently Reading" box until I start a new one. Right now I'm resting my brain from 18th century picaresque tales and reading the last issue of Giant Robot.

It was Halloween last night, but I don't think any kids came by our house at all. I didn't get home until 8PM, and the outside lights were off until then. Now we have a bunch of candy I have to hide from Kelly before she gets a tummyache. Kelly and I watched Poltergiest because I hadn't seen it before. It was pretty good, and it would be really scary if I was a little kid.

I found out about this cool streaming radio service today. It's called Pandora and it's part of the Musical Genome Project to describe every song based on its structure and rythm (sp?), etc. Anyways, Pandora asks you for a favorite song or artist and makes a radio station out of it. It adds songs to your playlist based on musical criteria rather than purchasing statistics (like amazon.com or iTunes does), and it does a pretty good job of picking songs that sound similar. I don't think it's perfect (my Dresden Dolls playlist picked up a crappy Vanessa Carlton song), but it's a good start to what I'm looking for a song-recommendation service.

Kelly's off in Yuma right now and I miss her. It's actually quite boring when she's not around. She sounds like she's doing well in Yuma, and she'll probably be back in a couple days.

As for me, I finally got a wireless card for my laptop this weekend. I wanted one for my birthday, but Kelly didn't know which one to get, so you just gave me a gift certificate to Best Buy as a proxy. That was fine by me because I can guarantee I get exactly what I want. Plus, I got a chance to browse and pick out the Sirius satellite radio that Kelly should get and the digital camera that I eventually want to buy.

By the way, I'm only about 50 pages away from finishing The Confusion by Neal Stephenson.

I'm back from Salt Lake City and GSA. Yesterday I just vegged out (and did a little cleaning around the house). Thanks a bunch to everybody that wished me a happy birthday yesterday. Sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring anybody recently, but I've been so busy getting ready for GSA, and I've been out of town since saturday.

SLC is one of those places that would be nice to raise kids, but you never want to live there. It's clean and safe and well planned, but there's not much to do. Since it's mormonville, they don't allow bars. But that's stupid, of course. There are going to be bars, whatever the laws may be, so you just have to figure out the loopholes. There are two types of bars in SLC, "restaurants" and "private clubs". In a restaurant, you have to order any food item if you want more than two drinks, and you can only stay a certain amount of time in them. Private clubs, on the other hand, are members only, so they can do whatever they want, including serving alcohol all day. Anyone can become a member for a nominal fee, so it's like a bar with a one-time cover. Silly mormons.

But I'm glad I'm back. I gotta clean up and organize my office 'cause it's a mess right now.

So I had trouble on the TEM yesterday. Everything started out great. I got the microscope aligned quickly, and I found the area of interest on my sample relatively easily. Then I tried to get a background EELS spectrum. I record my EELS spectra at 0.05 eV resolution. To do that, I take a background spectrum at 1.0 eV, and then center the peak (from the electron beam) where I need it to be to get the higher resolution. It's kind of like when you center your thin section under low magnification in a light microscope, then change to high magnification. The spectrometer has 1024 channels (i.e. pixels), and I need to center the peak somewhere within the first 100 channels. For some reason, I couldn't do that. I could move the peak up to higher channels but not below about channel 150. That means I couldn't even take spectra at 0.3 eV resolution, let alone 0.05 eV. I think one of the apertures is misaligned, but I don't have access to adjust it. So my TEM session was bust. I just took a couple of pretty pictures and left. I have no idea when this problem will be fixed, but it is being worked on. There's one other TEM that I know how to operate, so I'll try that one next week.

This is an issue for me because I need to collect some EELS data before I leave for GSA on the 15th.

These buggers in the Middle East creep me out! Don't click on the link if you're afraid of spiders.

I had an awesome field trip this weekend, looking at ore deposits around Bagdad with Don Burt. I put all my rocks on the table this morning, and I can't wait to have show and tell tonight.

Last night I had one of those nights. There's always one data stack that just goes horribly wrong, and since all my data collection had been going so smoothly so far, I new the smack down was coming. A stack usually takes 6-7 hours to collect, and between finding carbon in my sample, setting up the stack, and beam downtime during reinjection of the x-ray ring, I usually only get to run two stacks a day (morning and night). However, I've been finding carbon quickly, so I've been able to run three stacks per day, which is totally awesome. However, yesterday when I was starting my midday stack, I estimated that I'd be here until 12-1AM. That was acceptable, I guess. It was 5PM, and my stack would finish at around 11:30PM. Then I could set up the overnight stack. I stayed for the 7PM reinjection. During this, the beam is turned off, but the computer nows that somehow and pauses the stack, then restarts it once the beam is on again. However, there is always a little sample drift, so I stuck around to make sure what I was looking at didn't drift off the screen. It didn't, so I went to eat dinner and take a nap. During my nap, a small thunderstorm came up, and during one lightning strike, the lights in the room flickered. "Oh shit!" I thought. A power surge like that at the synchrotron can really fuck things up. The electrons that create the x-ray beams are flying around in a tightly controlled circle, and if the current changes even a little in the bending magnets, electrons fly everywhere and the beam "dumps". Not to mention sensitive equipment that could get fried. Luckily, only the beam dumped, but they didn't get it back and operational for 2 hours, which now meant I'd be up until 3AM. Well, fine! Fuck! Whatever. I get the stack started again and go out in the lobby to take a nap. But then...only after all that...the server computer, the one controlling the microscope, crashes! And it happened just after I went to take a nap! So I was fucking sleeping, and wasting my own fucking time, while the microscope was frozen. Of course by now its after 1:30AM, so I couldn't call anyone to fix this for me, and I did something I wouldn't normally recommend doing...I started clicking things. Actually, I only clicked on the program that crashed and hoped that fixed everything. It seemed to work. I had to focus the microscope and set up the stack again, which took until 2:30AM. I decided to forget about trying to run a third stack. Fortunately, this stack ran to completion and finished about 4AM, when I was comfortably dreaming in bed.

I just gave a talk here at the lab; the "lunchtime seminar". I was coerced by this guy in the administration office. He wouldn't let up until I said yes. I was nervous as hell, especially since I wasn't prepared at all. I used my old LPSC talk from March and just winged it. It didn't turn out too bad. I got to talk more about background and basic geology (what is a chert?) and didn't have to worry about offending anybody with my opinions. Plus I got free lunch and a hat!

So here's the long version of my NYC trip:

Brookhaven Labs is near the Shirley-Mastic station of the Long Island Rail Road, but there aren't any trains between 8AM and 1PM, so I had to drive 10 miles down the highway to Patchogue (pronounced "patch-ig"). From there I rode an express bus to Babylon station because they were doing maintenance on the track. If I had known, I would have just driven down to Babylon, which is only about 30 more miles down the road. At Babylon, I finally got on a train to Penn Station in downtown Manhattan.

My first stop was to take the subway down to Ground Zero. It was pretty intense staring at the huge concrete hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood. And it's hard not to tear up in St. Paul's chapel across the street. The have preserved inside some of the memorabilia people left at the site those first few weeks, like pictures of missing loved ones and firefighter patches.

Since I was downtown, I decided to walk down Wall Street. It was narrow and pretty boring; just a bunch of stuffy banks.

By now it was 1PM, so I decided I had time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's by Central Park, so it was a long subway ride. The museum is a few blocks away from the subway station, so I got to walk past Park Avenue highrises and ladies walking their stupid fluffy dogs. The Met was pretty cool, and frickin' huge. There are so many cool things there, but I limited myself to European Painting, American Painting, and some Modern Art. I walked past a lot of old furniture, which is something you don't see much in art museums. They have a bunch of Picassos (who I still don't get), and I was really impressed with the Rembrandts and Vermeers. I wish there were more people today who could paint like that. There was a Matisse exhibition, but I didn't go 'cause I don't care about him. One the roof they had a special installation by Sol LeWitt that is supposed to be a modern take on the New York skyline. I heard one stupid high school girl say "You know what would be cool? Take a picture of that with this in front." That being the skyline, and this being the artist's skyline. And I'm thinking "duh!"

By the time I was finished with the tiny part of the Met I allowed myself to peruse, it was time to head over to the East Village and the Giant Robot store. Then I ate at a local dumplings place. They had the best, freshest, veggie dumplings I've ever had. I recommend that anyone over in that part of the city definitely try this place.

After dinner, it was time to start heading back to Penn Station. It's relatively close to Times Square, so I decided to swing by there instead and walk to Penn Station. Let me tell you, Times Square is fucking intense, with all those neon lights and video screens staring you down. It's worse than Las Vegas because it's basically one big enclosed area rather than a long strip. There I saw MTV studios, and people from Comedy Central were out trying to get an audience for a new show they're taping. Alas, I didn't have the time!

Back in Penn Station, it was a little confusing to figure out which train to take out of there, unlike coming into the city where there's only one train on one track. But I got it and headed out to Babylon. When we arrived, the conductor called it the end of the line, I went down to find the bus to take me back to Patchogue, but there weren't any busses. Then I realized that I must transfer to the other train at the station, but when I got back up to the platform it was just pulling away. So I had to wait an hour for the next transfer to come by. That pretty much sucked. I got back to the lab at about 11PM. It was a pretty full day.

For anyone interested in costs:
One way from Patchogue to Penn Station (off peak) = $9.50
One way from Penn Station to Patchogue (peak) = $13.00
One day "fun pass" for the subway = $7.00
Student admission to the Met = $7.00

I'm in Brookhaven Labs once again. I scheduled myself an extra day, however, so today I'm going into New York City. Too bad I forgot my camera again. I definitely want to check out the World Trade Center site and the Giant Robot store, but I haven't figured what else I want to do. We'll see when I get there. Getting there will be an adventure, since I have to take the train into the city, then transfer to the subway. But of course there is train maintenance, so I think I might be rerouted by express bus (I'm not sure yet). Also, I have to drive a few towns over to Patchogue to catch a late morning train during the week.

Sorry for not blogging in a while. Once the new semester started, things have kicked into high gear. I've been doing a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of synchrotron data processing. I'm going back for the last time in two weeks, so I'm going through all my data to make sure I have everything covered. I'm also doing followup TEM work on the samples I analyzed two weeks ago, and starting to do sample prep for the next trip. All that and I've decided to take Don Burt's Ore Deposits class, mostly for employment reasons. It hasn't been so bad so far, but I think it would suck for undergraduates. I can see why all the undergrads hate Burt's petrology class.

Kelly goes back to Safford and Morenci this afternoon. Keep her in your thoughts!

So I'm trying to analyze my data from the synchrotron and nothing's working. Then I realize that they just put new parts in the x-ray microscope and rewrote some of the software to run it. They probably also changed the file format somewhat, which explains why I can't read the new files with the old software I have. Unfortunately, the new software requires the new version of IDL, which I don't have and can't afford right now. I'm trying to download the free "virtual machine" which only allows you to run software, but the website is running extremely slow right now, so I haven't been successful at it yet.

back in town. busy as all get out. gotta go!

I think I'm starting to go crazy from lack of food and sleep, too much repetition, and constantly staring at a computer screen. I'm talking to myself now, like the retard that I feel like. "Dint duh dile" = Print the file.

I drove out to Montauk Point yesterday after I started my morning "stack". I guess there's a famous lighthouse out there or something. I was more interested in all the glacial till. There are huge pieces of super-porphyritic granite (with feldspars the size of your thumb), awesome gniesses, and all sorts of igneous boulders. The sand there is, of course, made up of tiny minerals from these rocks, and I probably looked like a total idiot just standing there staring at a palm-ful of sand. There were these patches of purple sand too, which was composed of mostly mafics (I wish I had a magnet with me!) and a curious pink translucent mineral. It could just be rose quartz, but it was more the color of pink tourmaline. I tried to find the source rock for this pink sand, but I couldn't find it. I did find one egg-sized piece of a white (quartz? felspar?) rock with tiny pink minerals in it. It broke pretty easily, but the pink minerals were scarce, so you'd have to weather a whole lot of it to get a big patch of purple sand. And where would the mafic minerals come from? Oh well, next time I'm out there I'll try to remember to bring a vial with me. I did manage to collect a few cool pebbles, though.

It took two hours to drive out there and two hours back because of all the traffic in the Hamptons. I can't believe this major highway all of a sudden goes through the middle of these boutique-filled "villiages". Southhampton, Easthampton, Bridgehampton, and I'm sure there's a few more of them, too. At least Amangasset has a unique name. Then, when I got back, everything had gone to shit. I had to restart the stack halfway through...twice! Ultimately, I was up till after 1AM setting up the overnight stack.

Travelling to New York always sucks because of the time change. My goal is to get to Brookhaven by 5PM. Subtract 2 hr drive halfway across long island, 5 hrs of airline flights, 1 hr layover, 1 hr travel overhead, 3 hr time change, and I have to leave AZ at 5AM. This time I connected in Houston. The flight from Phoenix to Houston wasn't too bad. I slept most of the way. But I had to sit next to a fat girl on the way from Houston to New York. She was probably only a freshman in college, but she was oozing into my side over and under the armrest. Then she pulls out a Precious Moments coloring book! Ugh. There was also an actual monk on the plane. He was this big guy with a long gray beard, wearing a gray robe with prayer beads and a rope sash. I overheard someone ask what he was, and the monk said he was a Franciscan friar. What a crazy flight!

I'm blogging from the synchrotron at Brookhaven today. I've been really busy with sample prep and house stuff last week, so I haven't had time to blog until now. The x-ray microscope is taking a "spectral stack" now, which should take about seven hours. Nows my chance to eat and relax a bit.

Last week Kelly was out of town at Morenci, so I worked late at ASU to finish all the sample prep I needed to get done. But things kept happening. I had to plan for delivery of our new dishwasher, changing oil in my car and Kelly's car, hang out with friends that are in town for a couple weeks, and even my grandma died. Let me just say it was stressful to balance all these things, especially with all the emotional highs and lows. But I got everything done and my samples turned out well.

On a whim, I decided to check my biorhythm today. Turns out, in the next four days my intellectual, emotional, and physical cycles are all simultaneously at an all time low. Crap! Thank goodness I don't believe in that shit.

I'm done with the updates to my blog template.

Today is pissing me off. The dishwasher in our house is an old piece of shit, but it's under warranty so a guy has to come out and look at it. Of course, I can't schedule when the guy comes. Instead, I get a phone call yesterday that somebody will be out there between 11 and 3 'click'. It's already after 1PM now. At least I got some yard work done. There's some more weeds to take care of in the backyard, but I'm afraid I won't hear the doorbell out there.

Also, the lawn mower the landlord left us is also a piece of shit. Kelly, Jace, and I all tried to start it and failed. I have to call about that too after the dishwasher guy gets here.

Excuse the mess. I'm working on fixing the old, crappy HTML in the Blogger template.

I picked this template when I first started blogging, but it isn't available anymore. I like to think it's "rare" and unique. That's why I stick with it. But, like I said, the HTML is really crappy, so I'm in the process of cleaning it up.

Man, I keep forgetting to blog. I finally got our cable/internet/TiVo setup working peachy on Wednesday afternoon. Initial TiVo setup requires a phone line, so I had to bring it over to Kelly's parents house for a couple of hours to do that. After that, I hooked it up to the network and it works great. Today I signed up to expedite download of the new software version that will allow us to transfer files from the TiVo to our personal computers. This is almost like having TiVo in every room in the house!

I decided to hook my computer up to the TV because we download HBO shows off the internet (rather than paying an extra $10 a month just for Six Feet Under). Unfortunately, my computer is now only good for that because any sort of text looks pretty crappy on the TV, even though video looks fine. All the stuff we used to do on my computer we can now use Kelly's computer for.

Kelly and I are moved into our new place, but it's still a mess and the cable doesn't even work yet (Cox guy comes by tomorrow morning). I'll contact people soon with our new address.

In other news, I've recently discovered something both cool and useful. Konfabulator is software that run "widgets" on your computer desktop. I used to think that widgets only existed in theoretical economics problems (Tom can make XX widgets in YY hours with $ZZ in parts. How much should he charge per widget?) but I guess they refer to any little piece of software that displays information. The widget I like in particular (and I think would be really useful to everybody) is "What To Do", which simply presents a nice-looking to-do list on the desktop. I've been using the analog version of this widget (= pen and paper) for a while, so you can imagine how much better this is. This little gem is included with Konfabulator, but there are tons of other useful/entertaining widgets to download as well.

CNET has revealed their top 10 list of internet fads. I'd come across most of them before except for #7, Ellen Feiss. She did one of the commercials for Apple's "switch-to-mac" ad campaign, and can be seen here. I remember some other commercials for that campaign, but not hers. Then I found some parody ads...

• Monkey switch


• Tweek switch


• Canada switch


• Star Wars switch

In case you didn't know (because I didn't), HTML is going to way of the dodo, to be replaced in the future with XHTML. XHTML is pretty similar to its predecessor, but it is much more strict. More importantly, XHTML is supposed to separate style from content (in other words, no more formatting with tables!), and because of this, XHTML is much more flexible in how webpages can be designed. In the spirit of things, I took a little time to redesign my homepage with XHTML 1.0 (transitional), using CSS2 for all styling (and I didn't have to use a single < TABLE > tag). I didn't know a lick of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) before starting this, and I'm really impressed at how simple the HTML becomes.

Moving, moving, moving...

There's been quite a few things going on this week. On Tuesday, I did TEM all morning, attended Paul Niles' Ph.D defense, and finished a coherent GSA abstract. Joe has a practice defense this afternoon to prepare for his real one next week. I also got a new TiVo in the mail, and we get the keys to the house tomorrow.

Doh! I had forgotten that GSA abstracts are due tomorrow. Better start working on them!

I also have TEM tomorrow.

One more week

Kelly and I are supposed to get the keys for our new rental home this week. I'm very excited to finally start moving in, although we probably won't be living there for good until the end of the month, when our current lease expires. I'd rather be moving non-essential furniture than sitting around trying to not spend money.

Teaching Field Camp at the beginning of summer was a wise financial decision. Not only did it cut down on my food and entertainment costs for almost two weeks, but I get paid for it as well. My income for June was almost 3 time normal. This allowed me to afford the rent and deposit on Kelly and my new rental home (as well as pay for this months rent for our apartment) as well as paying off the rest of my auto loan early and buying a TiVo. The last two items will definitely save me money in the long run, since I don't have to worry about making car payments anymore or paying $10/month for Cox's crappy DVR. Kelly and I use that thing so much nowadays that we can't go back to "normal" television, just like how once you experience high-speed internet, you can't stand dial-up.

Too many exciting things to mention!

NEW Junko Mizuno book
NEW Braveland Design stuff
FREE TiVo deal

But I really should be saving up my money for moving in to Kelly and my new rental home. Drats!

I've posted a couple new pictures on my LOMO page. Click on "public albums" and then "Session5" to see them. To be honest, I'm getting sick of the format of this website, even though they give me free unlimited webspace for pictures. It takes me forever and it won't even show vertical pictures the right way. I like the ease of that software that Kelly uses for her pictures, even though I can't quite figure out how it works (The pictures just magically appear on the internet without uploading them anywhere!).

Edit: Added "Session6" too. It's technically not LOMO images, but it is taken with an expired disposable camera, which is well within the philosophy of LOMO.

Sounds like Tracy's Worst Nightmare. It's real too. I found their published journal articles on the technique.

Turns out I am a mutant. It doesn't really change my life in any way, though. I just have to remember to get up and go to the bathroom during long airplane flights instead of sitting still and holding it. To me, it's more of just being aware so that in the unlikely event that something does go wrong, I'll know what to do about it.

Kelly and I saw a commercial about the new Hyundai Tucson last night. The name just sounds silly to us, so we came up with some more car models:

• Honda Phoenix
• Ford Flagstaff
• Kia Ajo
• Saturn Buckeye

Can you think of any more good ones?

I did lots of stuff this weekend. I finally saw Episode III with Kelly and her brother. It was definitely better than Episodes I & II, but I wouldn't call it a great movie. There were some really good parts in it, but also a lot of cheesy parts too.

I also got to play croquet for real for the first time. I suck at it, but that actually helped me because I wasn't a threat or I was too far away from the other players. It was kind of fun, and there's a little bit of strategy involved.

I just finished reading Quicksilver. That book is a fucking monster. 916 pages long, and it's only the first volume of a trilogy!

As many of you already know, I had a bad/humorous fall during Field Camp. Well, my scrapes and bruises are healing nicely, but I still have that strange pain in my chest. So I went to the ASU Student Health Center to check it out. Fortunately, the x-rays were clear. My ribs are all healthy and strong, so it must be muscle pain, which makes the most sense to me. I also had them take some blood to check for the prothrombin 20210 mutation that my dad has. My late uncle died on the operating table because of it, so it's about time I got checked for it. My brother got checked and he doesn't have it, so hopefully I don't either. I go back to see the doctor for my results in a week.

Walking down to Student Services and back is unpleasant during the summer, but it pisses me off when I have to do it and end up accomplishing nothing. That happened yesterday when I tried to register for my one research credit. ASU decided that any grad student getting TA/RA money must be registered for at least one credit during that semester, even summer sessions. Unfortunately, they didn't get the new summer session tuition wavers into the computer system until after Field Camp began. So now I'm trying to register for my one credit late. I had to fill out this special form and get Jim Tyburczy (the dept. chair) to sign it. Then the academic advisor told me to take it to the registrar in Student Services. When I finally got there the registrar told me no way; I needed a CLAS dean's signature. So I had to walk there and back for nothing.

Turns out, I do need a dean's signature. But stupid Carol Comito (who is now on my Do Not Trust Because of Incompetence List) didn't know that. So I today I walked to the new Foundation building, which is north of University, to get that done. Then I had to walk all the way to south campus to Student Services again. Now I'm back in F-wing, where I have to call Sun-Dial to hold my classes with financial aid. That's one hell of a trip.

Field Camp is over now. I took the class in 2002, and I've TA'd it for the past three years. I will probably/hopefully be graduated by the time next summer comes around, so I should not be teaching a fourth year. This has got me thinking about my legacy with Field Camp. What improvements have I made to the class that will last and make it better?

For one, I've redrawn most of the sector boundaries. The purpose of this was first to make them smaller and more manageable and second to include/exclude parts. For example, I got rid of the "snork" on the sector with Access Ridge and Doubtful Canyon because it was a big time waster. Besides, that sector was very hard to map as it was. This summer I mapped the sector south of Camp Tontozona, and ended up reducing its size by about 1/3. The geology isn't all that complicated, but it takes 1-2 hours just to get back there, so students have less time to map. My only regret was that I wasn't able to map every sector to redraw them all. There are two extra large sectors to the west now that I've convinced Tom to split into three in the future when the highway construction is finished out there.

Secondly, I've convinced all the instructors that mapping on a double-scale map is helpful for making a key. I take the topo map the students use, scan it, and double the size. Then you can map more carefully and fit more on it, like small quartz veins and bits of travertine. This also makes us map more carefully and get the geology right. By having these more accurate double-scale map keys, we can get rid of most of those old student maps we've been using for keys, which may not even be right.

That's about all I can think of right now. Maybe there's other little things I've done to make Field Camp better.

I'm back in town for the weekend, but I have to go back up to Field Camp tonight. I missed Kelly, so it's nice to be able to spend at least a little time with her.

Man, just two days of mapping and I'm already exhausted. It's nice to see Kelly, even if its only for a little while. I'm driving back up to Camp Tontozona late tonight after the Dresden Dolls show. Speaking of Field Camp, it's not the same anymore. No more barracks for the students and no more crappy trailer for the teachers. There are new dorms now that have cable TV and (soon) internet. What a rip! No suffering at all. What's the fun in that?

I'm off to Field Camp soon. Wish me luck! Also, wish Kelly luck with her job in Kingman.

I'm gonna be heading up to Field Camp tomorrow. Don't know what to expect. I don't really know any of the students except for the bad one's. But I'll be back this weekend for the Dresden Dolls show.

w.bloggar

Because I'm sick of logging into the blogger website, I'm trying out a new blogging software program. Aside from the misspelled name, w.bloggar is a pretty good program. I can edit or delete old posts, and I can even edit the template (which is a total pain on the website). Hello is another good program for uploading pictures for your blog.

In other news, I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that my family and I moved to a small town in North Dakota. I was freaked out. Then I saw a cute French Bulldog puppy, but then I realized it was an ugly frenchy/golden retriever mix. The rest of the puppies were revoltingly ugly.

I promised details and I haven't delivered on that yet. I don't really have time to write about everything--it was such an action-packed week--but I'll summarize the highlights.

Friday - begin the all-night drive at 3 in the afternoon
Saturday - have been driving for 12 hours, through New Mexico in the pitch black night; Kelly finally takes over at 4AM in Colorado Springs; reach Grand Forks by 7PM; have an awesome burger at The Blue Moose as a reward.
Sunday - family stuff; Taco John's is awesome!
Monday - more family stuff; found a bunch of woods ticks around Devil's Lake that we find on ourselves for days to come; make it to Minot
Tuesday - visit awesome mineral collection in Parshall, ND; pissed that so many unique specimens have been ground into polished spheres; visit both North and South Units of Teddy Roosevelt National Park; see lignite in place for the first time; tons of buffalo; stay in Medora, the North Dakota equivalent of Tombstone
Wednesday - visit Devil's Tower; see a bunch of active coal mines along the highway; stay in Cheyenne
Thursday - go to Sierra Trading Post store in Cheyenne; eat lunch at Casa Bonita in downtown Denver, as featured in a South Park episode; can't believe that place actually exists; enjoy awesome mountain views along I-70; reach Moab, but can't find an empty campsite or motel room; end up in a handicapped room at fourth hotel checked; Kelly totally pissed at me
Friday - see Valley of the Gods and Goosenecks of the San Juan River; drive home

Kelly and I are back from vacation. More details later... 

Kelly and I are heading off for North Dakota today. I'll drive the first shift, after Kelly gets off work at noon. We'll probably begin driving between 2-3 PM. Hopefully, I can make it to Colorado by 2AM.

Here's something that's both scary and cool. ZabaSearch.com. There seems to be some problems with accuracy, however. It says I was born in September 1974 (not true) and that I lived in Phoenix (not true). It also says my parents were born in 1981 and 1957. How can my dad be younger than me? And I can't even find myself under "De Gregorio" (I have to search without the space, even though that is technically incorrect). But the bigger question is if I should be relieved that it doesn't know the real information about me?

So many things have been happening recently, it's hard to keep up. The important point is that many events are conspiring to keep Kelly and I from going to North Dakota next week. From my potential trip to Australia, to Kelly's tiny fender bender, to unnamed family issues, to thinking about home buying, and many more, it's definitely been stressfull. And the main issue is being able to afford it. With the high price of gas, food, and hotels, a road trip to ND and back will run somewhere around $1000. But we'll figure it out somehow.

I had a great weekend with Kelly. We went up to Strawberry and hiked down to Fossil Springs with the fam. Ed was so sore afterwards. He looks like such a tough doggy, but he's so pitiful and wimpy sometimes it's funny. The rest of the family tried out the new tent trailer nearby. We found a great camping spot among the junipers just off the forest road to Fossil Springs. Kelly and I got to stay at the awsome Windmill Inn in Strawberry. One of the best things about this weekend was that the weather was awesome, but there was still nobody around because it's not "the season" yet.

In other news, I think I'll try submitting my paper one last time (after revision, of course). Tom thinks American Mineralogist letters may be a good bet. I hope so.

So Geology decided not to publish my paper. What the fuck? It's really discouraging that I can't get anything published, and yet I'm being invited to a special workshop in Australia? So is my research worth anything or not?

I'm back and I'm tired. I'm incapable of laughter right now. If I see or hear something funny, my throat makes a strange noise that is somewhere between a cough and a laugh, which then devolves into a paroxysm of coughing. So when I say I was coughing all the way through the last weeks episode of The Office, you can't tell whether I was really sick or it was totally hilarious.

Brookhaven Report #3:
Man, I'm exhausted. I've been working long days, and I've been sick, and it's finally over. I used up all my beamtime, and hopefully my data will be useful. Today I spent on the FTIR beamline looking at some of my samples, and realized that one of them was actually a piece of skin (or something like that)! I actually think I embedded it in sulfur with my sample because there are a number of equally-sized pieces of the same material all over that particular sample. Fortunately, I did get one spectrum of real sample, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but it's very disconcerting when you fuck up something like that. (No wonder the spectrum of it looked so weird!). Today was also the first day when I didn't feel sick, which pisses me off because for the past three days when I was breaking my back collecting important data I was forcing myself to work when all I wanted to do was crawl in bed because I couldn't replace the lost beamtime. And today all I had to do was watch George collect infrared spectra of my samples.

But the important thing is that I'm done, and now tomorrow I can go home and see Kelly, who I love and miss so much. And eat Jamba Juice for a week (Long Island food is horrible!).

Brookhaven Report #2:

Things are busy here, and pretty exhausting. Not in the sense of lugging heavy weights around all day, but in the sense of staring at a computer screen for 16 hrs a day.

I got my ID badge alright, so everything is good on the security end. My laptop even connects to the internet right when I plug it in (which doesn't normally happen here--I'll have to enable some proxy server or script or something). Unfortunately, I feel a little under the weather. It's just a runny nose and a cough (the dry eyes are from staring at computer monitors all day). It could turn out just to be allergies, but I won't know that until I come back to AZ, and I've never had an allergic reaction like this before. Anyway, it's a bit miserable physically, and I have to get research accomplished even though all I want to do is crawl up in bed and rest.

Everybody should be thinking happy thoughts about Kelly, too. She's working nights all week, which is very commendable for a morning person like her.

I'm here, reporting live from Brookhaven. Man, it's been a crazy couple of days.

I thought I was screwed Sunday night because I spent alot of time playing with Kelly out in the sun, but by the evening I was shivering even though my body temp was high. I didn't think I was sick, because I didn't feel sick. I just had a fever. It was probably just heat stroke or something like that, but it passed sometime in the night and I woke up Monday totally dehydrated. My biggest fear, of course, was getting sick the day before I had to leave for New York, so I was glad I didn't have the flu or West Nile or anything like that. I just made sure to drink lots of water on Monday and not stress myself.

Things were going well after that. I finished all my preparations at ASU and then went home to do laundry. I had a nice evening with Kelly, and I even finished Out so I could discuss the weird ending with Kelly. I was relaxed and slept well, so I wasn't really all that tired at 4AM. My flights went smoothly (very unusual).

But then, as I was first heading out to Long Island from La Guardia in my rental car, I realized what was wrong (there's always something, isn't there?). I had forgotten my ID badge. I can't get onsite without one, and even if I got a temporary one, I wouldn't be able to get into the synchrotron (it doubles as a keycard). So I stressed out a bit as I slowly made my way east through the traffic until I realized that this probably happens alot, so there must be concessions. I did get a temporary pass, and I can probably get access to the NSLS tomorrow morning. Worst case scenario, I have to wait until my real badge arrives via FedEx tomorrow (thank you so very much, Mike Kraft).

Now, since I'm exhausted from a full day of travelling, I'm going to try to relax and get some sleep.

Sample prep is going well. From my initial ten samples, five managed to make it through the microtomy process. From those five I made 19 TEM sections which are on the dryer right now. Tomorrow I'll look at them to see which of them contain actual tiny rock fragments.

I watched Pamela Anderson's new show "Stacked" on the DVR this morning. It pretty much sucked, which was expected. But I'm a sucker for her for some reason. I admit, I watched VIP when it was on. But that show was all about hot girls in cool, cute outfits kicking ass, and I'm a fan of that. It wasn't about acting or plot at all. But Stacked has a plot, and not a very good one at that. It's probably destined for the cancelled bin, but I may watch another episode or two just for Pam.

I forgot to mention that Tegan and Sara played a short set at the MU yesterday. I think they had a show last night. Anyway, their new single "Walking with a Ghost" is one of the catchiest songs I've heard all year. Y'all need to download it if you can. By the way, the second catchiest song this year is "The Suggestion Box" by Aqueduct.

Not much has been going on lately. I've been busy with sample prep for the synchrotron next week. It's pretty repetitive. I started with ten samples and I'm down to six, a few of which should be done tomorrow. There's a lot of fine handiwork that must be done with special tiny tools, so it's easy to destroy the sample. I start out with more than I need, because I only need to end up with 2-3 TEM-ready sections.

To anyone who'll be in Tucson next week. My brother's film "Live In" is showing at the Arizona International Film Festival. I plan on going to the screening this Saturday afternoon.

I had a great weekend with Kelly. She's back from Ajo now, so it was nice and relaxing. It's really nice to have her back.

I got my GSRP grant renewal today. I get paid for another year now.

I found out why my office is so friggin' cold. The lab next door has the temperature sensor for the A/C. Unfortunately, it is right next to a broken fume hood that is blowing in air from outside constantly. That causes the temperature sensor to think it's hot all the time, so the A/C is on non-stop. There was a guy working on it late this afternoon, so maybe it will be fixed by tomorrow, but who knows.

Hitachi makes hard drives (among other things), and they've recently announced a new idea for storing more data on the same size disks. They've also created a Schoolhouse Rocks-type animation to explain the concept. Bliss!

It's so fucking cold in my office right now. I can't stand it. I'm all tense and curled up in front of my laptop right now, and I can't concentrate on anything. The building is supposed to have wireless right now, so maybe I should go get a wireless card so I can get some work done.

Ajo Update #2
Kelly is doing well. They are on the final stages of the well installation. Actually, I think they finished yesterday. Unfortunately Kelly has to stick around for the pump installation and final testing. So it will be at least another week, but it shouldn't be more than two. It was great seeing Kelly again. Last weekend we had some arguments but this weekend it was all disgusting lovey-dovey stuff. I'll spare you-all the gory details. By the way, Kelly strongly recommends a book called "Out" by Natsuo Kirino. I drove around Ajo mostly on Saturday while Kelly was working. I even snuck into the mine site an collected from the tailings pile (There are plenty of places to do this because the mine is so huge). I also drove around the nearby backcountry and found some placer mines. Also, I practiced drifting a little bit. There was a very wide stretch of straight, level, gravel road, so I lined up along on side, accelerated to about 25 mph or so, and then pulled the hand brake while turning the wheel. I was actually able to spin the car 180 degrees!

I was actually gonna post all this yesterday, but there was a big power outage at ASU yesterday afternoon. All of physical sciences was out of power, and maybe most of ASU. Then when the power came on, weird things started happening. The H-wing fire alarm went off, cancelling the chemistry seminar I was going to attend. And some people got stuck in the elevator in F-wing. The internet seemed to work, but I couldn't check email or connect to blogger.com.